Gone Fishing...

After exploring the lake on Sunday, we decided to rent a pontoon boat for a 1/2 day on Monday to do some fishing. We set out early so we could be out on the water before all the boats and jet ski's. While my Dad and Jamie prepared the fishing poles I was assigned the task of finding a nice place to fish.

It was pretty cool in the morning, especially while the boat was moving but it gradually got warmer as the day went on.

My Mom, Jamie, and I had a pretty good day catching fish. Our best catch came near the damn (Shaver is a man made lake and the damn is pretty impressive. As kids we took a tour of it with my Dad, he loved it of course, I mostly remember walking around with a hard hat and flashlight). We caught about 4 fish in 20 minutes!

Here is our catch from the boat, we later continued to fish near the damn and my Mom caught one more.

Unfortunately, my Dad wasn't very lucky but he made up for it on Wednesday.

Here is a good picture of the damn with Jamie and my Mom trying to get a couple more fish for dinner. When we got back, my Mom and Jamie cleaned the fish. Apparently Jamie got in a small water fight with another guy there, but that's a story for him to tell. We cooked the fish, 6 rainbow trout and 1 brown trought (I'm proud to have caught the brown, it's native and rare to catch, the rainbow are stocked every year so they are plentiful) in tin foil on the bbq and had fish tacos. They came out amazing, so fresh and tasty.

Camping at Shaver Lake

We are back from vacation. We spent a week at Shaver Lake, which is about an hour inland from Fresno, CA. We camped at Camp Edison, owned and operated by Edison International, which means it was pretty clean, well run, and had free electricity. We drove up to our campsite on 6/20 and got there in the late afternoon. My Aunt Milissa, my cousin Valerie and her boyfriend, Aaron came up as well. Valerie's Dad, Mike, joined us on Tuesday.

On our first day up there this hawk comes and lands right next to our campsite. Jamie was even able to get pretty close and take several pictures before it flew away. It was beautiful and a nice way to start our holiday.

Setting up camp wasn't too difficult. We went through a company that delivers campers to sites to rent for the week. So when we turned up, everything was set up and we just had to unload our stuff and fill the fridge. (so it's not the rugged camping some people like but for us it was a happy medium).

Here is my Mom, Dad, my aunt Milissa and myself sitting outside one morning for breakfast.

Our first day we just explored the lake. It was about a 10 minute walk to the lake from our site and you could drive a good distance along the lake. It is a huge lake and we only explored a small portion.

Here are my parents as we walked down to have a look at the lake.

The first couple of days were pretty cool, I froze the first night. So of course, I was all bundled up. Luckily, as the week went on it continued to get warmer.

This was a nice little part of the lake near our campsite. It was pretty quiet and boats and jet ski's weren't allowed to make wake in it. So it turned out to be the perfect swimming area.

Over the next couple of days I'll post more pictures. To Be Continued...

The Back Garden

We've been asked to post pictures of how the garden is looking. We have planted some tomato and corn plants recently. They are doing well and hopefully by the end of summer we will have some corn to bbq and salsa to make . For those of you who can't tell, the two on the right are corn and the ones on the left are tomato.

My herb garden has really grown and my chili plants are petty much loaded. They still have flowers on them, so I think they will be producing all summer. Above is a picture of one of my Jalapeno plants.

Here is a picture of my herb garden. They have done well in this spot. The tall one on the right, with the white flowers, is my cilantro (basically a type of parsley). I have already chopped it down significantly but it continues to grow. I even had to prop it up with two sticks because it fell over onto the oregano. The two larger ones on the left are the New Mexico and Poblano Chili plants. We bbq'd a New Mexico chili a couple of weeks ago and it came out pretty good. I also have two baby rose bushes, an orange-peach one on the left and a red rose on the right. They are finally looking healthy and are starting to bloom.

Here is another one of the Chili plants, the Poblano. They are getting pretty big and some of them are looking ready to eat :) I am going to have a lot of chili's, so I've been looking into drying them or pickling them, so that we have some this winter. It's a whole new subject for me so we will see what happens. I'll also have to dry some of the herbs, if it all works out it will be pretty cool.

La Jolla - Kayaking

Over Memorial Day weekend (5/23) we drove down to La Jolla (pronounced "La-Hoy-Ya") in San Diego to go on their Kayaking Caves Tour. We took an underwater camera with us and so had to get it developed the old fashion way, which ended up taking over two weeks to get developed. But I finally have them!

Here we are with all our gear before we headed down to the beach.

Here I am patiently waiting for our tour guide to show up. As you can see, helmet and life jacket complete with an orange whistle. Safety first. There were 4 or 5 other couples that were on our tour, pretty small compared to some of the groups we saw going out after we had returned.

This is the view from our kayak once we got out into the water. Since I was in the front seat I was pretty much drenched from the waist down but the sun was out so it wasn't too bad. The waves were only about 3 feet high, so it actually wasn't too hard to get out there. The night before I was fearing 10 ft swells crashing on me.
Once we were out in the water, we then saw where we were paddling too. We made plenty of stops along the way to look at the leopard sharks below us (leopard sharks are bottom feeders and eat worms, mollusks, crustacians, octopuses, and small fish) as well as the architecture along the coastline and learned about the ecosystem.

This one came out a bit blurry but right on those rocks are sea lions.
Finally, we made it to the caves. We were the last group to go through.

And here we are inside the cave. We saw pelicans, garibaldi fish, sea lions, leopard sharks, and had a great time. The best part was riding the waves back to the beach, no paddling necessary and it was a pretty good adrenaline rush. Our kayaking trip took about an hour and a half and was totally worth it. We both had an amazing time. Once we got back and got changed we had a lovely brunch at a local restaurant, we definitely worked up an appetite.

Ranchos

Another weekend of exploring, this time we drove up to LA County to see Rancho Los Alamitos in Long Beach. In 1790, a Spanish foot soldier, Manuel Nieto, received the area as part of a 300,000 acre land grant for his retirement. He built a simple adobe house on the property to house the ranchers and farm hands. It later was sold and turned into a summer retreat (circa 1880s) for a wealthy family from Los Angeles. They transformed the adobe into a suitable house and began planting trees and creating gardens. Today, it is known for it's different types of gardens, although they still give tours of the house. Above, is a picture of one of the gardens, the cacti garden. The giant blue-ish plant to the right is an 80 year old Agave plant. The smaller but still huge, green with yellow outline on the left, is another type of agave plant not quite as old. The agave is best known to make tequila but as we found out has other uses as well. We were lucky enough to have a private tour of the cacti garden by the gardener himself. He was ecstatic to show us all of his cacti that were in bloom and tell us some of the uses the plants have. He showed us the below tool used by Native Americans and made from the giant blue agave.
This is one of the first needle and threads. They would shred the leaves of the agave plant which come to a sharp point at the end (which eventually would become the needle). Then they would create the rope from the strands. He had all sorts of interesting facts and definitely entertained us with his stories and enthusiasm.

Some of the cacti were in bloom, most bloom at night but there are a few that bloom during the day.

They also had artichoke plants. I was so amazed when I found out that an artichoke is a flower and always wanted to see one bloom in person. So I was thrilled when we found this in the garden.

Most of the plants were old and established and this hibiscus plant was absolutely huge. It's one of the biggest hibiscus flowers I have seen! Beautiful.